Suckers

by Z. Rider

  “Yeah,” Ray said.

  “I’m an awful person. But the minute I decided the hell with this, I felt so much better.”

  “You’re not an awful person,” Ray said.

  Her phone went off. She fished it from her purse.

  Ray looked at Dan. They had one of those silent couple’s conversations themselves, one where Ray asked, again, How long can we do this? and Dan still didn’t have an answer.

  “Oh good!” Sarah said. “Good, now get off the phone before you get in a wreck.” When she hung up, she said, “He’s stuck in traffic on I-93.”

  “That sounds about right,” Dan said. “Even without an alien parasite invasion.”

  “Some things never change,” Ray said. “Hey, I’m glad you’re going to be home. We’ve probably done enough damage to your kid.”

  Dan was glad she was home because it meant maybe one or both of them could get the fuck out of the house more often—without a four year old in tow. Even romps in the woods were off limits now, after gunshots had echoed through the dead trees. Hunters, they’d guessed, feeding their families—but a brown-haired little girl running through the trees could be easily mistaken for game by someone already on edge. Even a little girl in a fluffy blue coat.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Richard Miller was fine with the attic bedroom, and a little ashamed he’d gotten himself attacked by one of those flying whatsits. His arrival didn’t quite free Dan and Ray up—someone strong enough to wrestle him to the ground if something went wrong had to be around. It was still a help, though. A new person for Jane to pester with questions, an extra set of hands when things needed to be done.

  They’d started blood donations the night he arrived. He’d curled his lip at the first taste they offered, and the touch of the warm blood on his tongue made him retch, but they put the rest in the fridge—he’d feel differently soon enough. Or, Sarah said, he wouldn’t—maybe he wasn’t infected after all. Dan and Ray stayed silent. Tense.

  Curfew closed retail stores and any other nonemergency business an hour before sunset. Medical workers, cops, emergency crews, and the National Guard were the only ones out at night, and they stayed inside—hospitals, nursing homes, armored vehicles.

  † † †

  Three nights after arriving, Rich had a headache. Dan touched his arm, asked if he heard buzzing. And Rich, staring at Dan’s fingers on him, nodded. Dan looked up, but Ray was already in the kitchen, bottles rattling in the fridge door.

  The blood did its thing. Sarah looked away, her face tight. Her throat moved as she swallowed the reality of the situation.

  They kept extra in the fridge at all times. They might have a thin night of canned soup beefed up with bullion cubes and water, pieces of old bread to dip in it, but they never had a thin night when it came to blood for Rich.

  Sarah started baking, flour being easier to get their hands on than convenience foods. Faye made stock from whatever they had—bones or the odds and ends of vegetables. Soup became a staple. Anything that could be stored in the cool garage for later—dried beans, rice, potatoes, whatever the guys could get their hands on—was dumped into garbage bags and stuffed into tubs that Dan had first emptied of old blankets, unalbumed photos, knick-knacks he remembered knocking over when he was a kid.

  It was night—Jane in bed, Sarah in the kitchen getting bread dough set to rise overnight so they’d have fresh first thing in the morning. She had flour up to her elbows, asking Dan if he could get her a little water, when the yell cut through the boarded-up windows.

  Her hands stopped moving. “Was that an animal?”

  Dan turned his eyes toward the front of the house.

  It came again, closer. His breath stalled. His scalp prickled.

  “That’s not an animal,” Sarah said. “Buddy!”

  Feet pounded up the stairs already.

  He burst into the kitchen. “Did you hear that?”

  “Mommy, what’s going on?”

  Dan was already moving toward the front of the house. Ray came down the hallway from his room. Buddy came with them.

  This time, it was clear: “Help me!” A woman’s voice. Buddy pushed past them, into the living room. He yanked one of the loose boards down. One of the parasites slammed into the window, as big as a pigeon. Buddy jerked back.

  “Help!”

  They crowded the window, peering into the darkness encroaching at the edges of the outside security light.

  “There.” Ray pointed toward the tree line at the edge of the yard.

  A woman ran over that bit of lawn, her head cranked back to watch the trees behind her. No coat, just what looked like slippers on her feet. Her ponytail jumped as she ran, and Dan’s thoughts went first to Patricia at Dunkin’ Donuts before he realized it was Bethany from up the street.

  “Shit.” Ray put a hand against the window. Creatures circled over her head. One broke free, swooping down as she reached the driveway. She flailed an arm, but her immediate concern seemed to be what was behind her. Her feet pounded toward the house. Her eyes turned their way. Caught theirs through the glass. She yelled, “Help!” as another of the parasites dove into her, knocking her to her knees.

  A bulky shape burst from the trees a hundred feet behind her. Lumbering with a hitch, almost dragging its leg.

  “What is it?” Sarah asked from the doorway.

  “Get downstairs with Jane,” Buddy said.

  Another parasite dove, and Bethany spilled over again, coming down hard on her hands—yelling. Her eyes circled with white as she tipped her head to their window again.

  “What are you going to do?” Sarah asked.

  “I don’t know. Get downstairs.”

  Bethany’s husband limped onto the driveway, teeth gritted, hands clenched. Eyes pinned on her. One leg of his trousers was soaked a deep black in the light cast from the security lamp.

  “We have to let her in,” Faye said.

  Bethany scrambled up their front steps. The storm door rattled with pounding. The attic door opened, Rich tentatively sticking his head out. “What’s going on?”

  “HELP!”

  “We have to let her in,” Faye said.

  Bethany’s husband reached the walkway, dragging that leg.

  “Jesus,” Buddy said. “We can’t—”

  “He’s got her,” Ray said. “He’s fucking got her.”

  Dan put a hand on the window. Bethany’s screams vibrated the glass.

  The man had her turned around. She hit him with her fists, yelling in his face.

  “That’s Alex,” Faye said. “We can’t let this happen. We cannot let this happen on my front steps.”

  “Where are you going?” Buddy said sharply as she bustled out of the living room.

  Dan started away from the window quickly, heading for the hall.

  Rich was already halfway down the steps to the front door. No coat, no shoes.

  “Don’t open that fucking door!” Buddy yelled.

  Dan took the stairs in two jumps, grabbing the edge of the door as Rich pulled it open. “I’ve got it,” he said, his heart pounding. Bethany’s screams turned to shrieks. “Make it quick.”

  Then Ray was there, and Buddy.

  Bethany’s shrieks drove into Dan’s head like nails. He gripped the door tighter. He couldn’t see around it. Was not sure he wanted to. The noise—it wasn’t of someone fighting someone off anymore. It was agony.

  Faye clutched his shoulder, put her forehead against his back.

  Two thick smacks shook the glass in the storm door. A choked sound jumped from his mom’s throat. She held on to him harder.

  Bethany’s screams became gurgles, wet and airy.

  “He’s got her,” Rich said, frozen with his hand on the latch.

  Another creature crashed into the door.

  Dan jerked his head aside, trying to get away from the wet grunting and sucking noises coming from just outside. He squeezed his eyes shut. Tried to swallow and couldn’t.

&nb
sp; That could have been him. That could have fucking been him.

  Buddy put a hand on Rich’s shoulder. Drawing him back gently, he closed the front door. The latch clicked quietly into place. Buddy braced a hand against the wood, his head bent.

  Dan thought of Janice, from the apartment below his. Lily. His throat was a hard ache. That could have been me. His mother’s tears soaked through his shirt, her body shaking. He reached under Buddy’s arm and snapped the deadbolt into place, reached his other hand into his pocket and drew out his phone.

  Eight rings went by before the 911 dispatcher answered. He told her what happened. She wanted to know where the sucker was now.

  A low-pitched moan came from the other side of the door—endless. It hurt more even than Bethany’s cries had: the pain of a man who’d just realized what he’d done to his own wife.

  “He’s still there,” Dan said. Aching.

  “It’ll be morning before we can send anybody out.”

  “He just killed his fucking wife.” He strode across the landing, shoving a hand into his hair. “He’s right outside the fucking door. He just killed someone.”

  “Your doors are locked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Windows boarded?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sit tight. We’ll be able to get someone out at sunup.”

  They spent the night in the living room, all of them, listening to Bethany’s husband sob below their windows. Buddy held his daughter, his wife against his side. Faye cried silent tears, and Rich eased her under his arm, rubbing her shoulder, whispering that he was sorry.

  It went quiet around four a.m. When they looked out, Bethany’s body was alone, her hands folded over her chest, her eyes drawn closed. Before sunup, a single shot echoed through the dead woods.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  What they’d seen ate at all of them, but it seemed to be eating Ray almost literally. Rather than waste a plate of food he didn’t have the stomach for, he spent mealtimes in the garage, living on cigarette exhaust. More restless every time he came out.

  Dan was moving laundry from the washer to the dryer when he heard Ray’s phone go off on the other side of the wall. Something about it stilled his hands. Buddy was at work. If he’d needed to contact them, he’d have used the house number—unless it was something Buddy didn’t want Sarah or Faye hearing, and if it was that, it could only be bad.

  The wall muted Ray’s words.

  Dan shoved the wet clothes in the dryer and left the door hanging open as he headed for the garage. When he stepped inside, Ray was saying, “Where are you right now?” And he knew, by those words, by the tone of voice that carried them, that Jamie was on the phone.

  He walked up by Ray, and Ray pressed his fingers to his forehead, a half-smoked cigarette clamped between them. “Okay, yeah, I know where that is. I can be there in—” He glanced toward the windows, as if they could tell him the time. They’d been covered with blue paint Faye had bought for the guest room a few years ago. “Yeah, like thirty minutes, forty tops. Stay put, all right?”

  Dan picked at a sliver of wood at the edge of his dad’s old workbench, his back stiff across the shoulders, his jaw tight.

  He waited for Ray to hang up before saying, “Was he bit?” Because that would be the worst situation: four people supporting two infected. They’d have to make it five at that point—either Rich or Jamie was going to have to deal with getting his blood. There was no other way to make it work.

  “No,” Ray said. “He just doesn’t know where to go.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Manchester.”

  “What about home?” Dan said. “Merrimack’s gotta be better than Manchester. Surely his parents have figured something out.”

  “That’s where he was. He couldn’t take it.” Ray dragged his hair back. “We gotta do it.”

  “I know.” After what they’d seen, he knew. If it was possible to pick up Jamie in the daytime and get him to safety…

  “He can’t use if he’s here,” Ray said. “There’s nothing to use.”

  Dan nodded.

  The wood he’d been picking slipped, jabbing under his fingernail. He shoved his finger in his mouth.

  “I’m gonna go get him.” Ray grabbed the jacket he’d hung over the vise mounted to Dan’s dad’s old workbench.

  “What time is it?”

  “Early enough that I can make it there and back,” Ray said.

  “I should come too.”

  “Nope. You’re on Rich duty. Like I told Jamie,” Ray said, “I’m gonna pull up and honk. I’m not even getting out of the car.”

  “I wish it was earlier. You could combine it with a supply run. It’s stupid to waste the gas without getting anything for it. Where will we put him?”

  “Dunno.”

  He followed Ray out.

  “I guess he’ll have to room with you or me,” Ray said.

  “I’m not rooming with Jamie. Not unless Rich is interested in licking blood off the walls.” Same house he could handle. Same room? Jesus Christ. An irrational objection to the idea of Jamie bunking with Ray bobbed up too. After everything he and Ray had been through, he couldn’t take lying there at night feeling like the third wheel. And he kind of hated himself at that moment: with all that was going on, he was concerned with feeling jealous? “How about you bunk with me? Let Jamie have his own room where he can’t annoy the shit out of anyone.”

  “It’s all the same to me. I spend most of the night sitting in the garage anyway.”

  “You’re in a world of hurt when you run out of cigarettes.”

  “I might have to see if I can get some while I’m out.”

  “Don’t push your luck.” He stopped in the doorway of the guest room Ray’d been living in. Clothes lay strewn on the floor. Ray’s laptop was open on his bed, its screen black. “Before dusk comes on, get your ass out of there,” Dan said. “Anyone looking for trouble comes walking down the road, get your ass out of there. Call me a piece of shit if you want, but if we lose Jamie, we lose Jamie. If we lose you…” He clenched his fists in his pockets. “We’d have to tell Jane she doesn’t have an uncle anymore.” A tight ache swelled in his throat. He was manipulating Ray; he knew that. He just hadn’t realized how hard it would hit him to speak the words. “So keep your eyes on shit, and if there’s anything sketchy, get the fuck out of there.” His voice came out coarser than he’d intended.

  “Yep.” Ray’s keys jingled as he shoved them in his jacket pocket.

  Dan followed him down the hall. Jane’s voice coming from the kitchen, asking questions as Sarah kneaded bread. Rich answered them patiently.

  “I’ll be back,” Ray said.

  “Promise?” Dan said.

  “Scout’s honor.”

  “You were never a Scout.” Dan went down the steps with him, held the door open at the bottom. When Ray got in his car, Dan pulled himself back into the house.

  “Where’s Ray off to?” his mom said when he got to the top of the stairs.

  “Picking up Jamie. Set an extra place for dinner.” He hoped they wouldn’t wind up with two plates too many.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The boards for the living-room windows stood propped against the fireplace, giving them access to sunlight, if just for a little while. Dan stared out at the road.

  “Did your dad fish?” Rich asked, studying the selection of books on the built-in shelves that flanked the windows.

  “Yeah.” Treetops twitched across the yard as squirrels darted across the branches. Did it look darker out already?

  Rich tipped a book from the row, opened it, started flipping pages. The clock on the mantel ticked quietly.

  Rich said, “Do you still have his gear?”

  “Out in the barn somewhere I think.”

  “I could get up early and go fishing. I hope he made some of these.” He lifted the book—one on tying flies. “Because I’m not sure my fingers were ever that agile.”

  D
an rubbed his phone, resisting the urge to check the time again.

  His ears pinged on road noise, tires on gravel. He put a knee on the window seat and pressed his forehead to the glass. The pickup came bumping into view.

  “That Buddy?” Sarah called from the kitchen, an edge to her voice. She wasn’t happy about Jamie, not after what they’d witnessed with Bethany. What if Jamie’d been bitten, she’d wanted to know. What if they were letting a time bomb into the house? What if he’d been bitten and he wasn’t telling them? Dan told her he and Ray would be able to spot the symptoms before it got too far. He hoped he was right.

  Dan said, “Yeah,” watching Buddy hop out of the truck.

  “I’m gonna show Daddy my bunny bread!” Jane said.

  Buddy’d notice they were a car short—and it was the first thing he said as he tromped up the stairs: “Who’s out?”

  “Ray,” Sarah said.

  “I’m thinking of going fishing in the morning,” Rich held up the fly-tying book for Buddy to see.

  “Can I go?” Jane asked. She had her bunny bread clutched in two hands like a doll. One of the ears was ready to fall off.

  Dan’s stomach churned. He looked back out the window.

  “How was work?” Sarah asked.

  “Only three of us there today. I knew Bobby was taking off with his family, but Pat didn’t call in or nothing.”

  “I hope he’s okay.”

  Dan listened to him kiss the top of Jane’s head and Jane exclaim, “Look at the bunny I made!”

  Dan clutched his phone. “I’m gonna get some air.”

  “Don’t stay out too long,” Sarah said.

  “You all right?” Buddy asked.

  “Yeah. Just getting a headache from being cooped up.”